uswds / public-sans

A strong, neutral, principles-driven, open source typeface for text or display

Public Sans

Current font files for the Public Sans typeface. This typeface is based off of https://github.com/impallari/Libre-Franklin. Public Sans is a Latin-only font.

Usage

• Webfonts are available in fonts/webfonts
• Opentype fonts for installing locally and for print applications are available in fonts/otf
• Variable fonts should be considered experimental, but can be found in fonts/variable
• Source files are available in sources as both Glyphs files and as UFO + Designspace.

Design principles

• Be available as a free, open source webfont on any platform.
• Use metrics similar to common system fonts for smoother progressive enhancement.
• Have a broad range of weights and a good italic.
• Perform well in headlines, text, and UI.
• Be straightforward: have as few quirks as possible.
• Have good multilingual support.
• Allow for good data design with tabular figures.
• Be strong and neutral.
• Encourage continuous improvement — strive to be better, not necessarily perfect.

How Public Sans differs from Libre Franklin

Public Sans is a fork of the SIL Open Licensed face Libre Franklin. Public Sans has many similarities with its parent, but differs enough in its particulars that its effect is distinct.

Adjusted vertical metrics. Public Sans is about 2% shorter than Libre Franklin, and has slightly looser default line spacing.

Tailed lowercase l. The lowercase l character has a hooked tail for disambiguation. (There is also an optional untailed l .)

Regularized stroke weight. Public Sans provides a more regular letterform from the conventional Franklin shape for a cleaner, more consistent letterform, especially at small sizes.

Non-rounded vertices. Conventional angled vertices result in a sharper, stronger form.

Narrower characters. Public Sans is narrower, especially in rounded characters like lowercase e to help with reading flow, especially in longer texts.

Looser letterspacing. Public Sans has relatively loose letterspacing for reading, especially when compared with Libre Franklin, which is quite compact.

Redrawn characters. Public Sans tends to use more consistent curves in its letterforms and has a focus on a smooth shape for its counters.

Overall, Public Sans differs from Libre Franklin in its focus on longform reading and neutral UI applicability. It takes inspiration from geometric sans faces of the 20th century, as well as the original Franklins of the 19th, resulting in something of a mongrel face that retains its American origin.

Public Sans and comparable sans-serif faces

Public Sans is designed to be a progressive enhancement webfont, and to work well with Apple and Google system fonts as the base in its font stack. It's designed to have metrics most similar to SF Pro Text (the Apple system font) and to fall somewhere between SF Pro Text and Roboto (the Google system font) in its overall size and appearance. If a user's machine does not display webfonts, sites designed with Public Sans should appear close to the designer's intention.

Public Sans is a good option for sites that currently use Open Sans, Tahoma, Libre Franklin, Arial, or Helvetica.

Public Sans is sized somewhere between SF Pro Text and Roboto

Text set in Public Sans has a similar shape and color to SF Pro Text

Additional features

Tabular figures (monospaced numerals)

License

Public Sans is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1

License of USWDS’s Modified Version is based on the Libre Franklin SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1 section of LICENSE.md. The terms and conditions for modifications made to the original font by USWDS in the USWDS Modified Version can be found at https://github.com/uswds/public-sans/blob/master/LICENSE.md.

public-sans's Issues

Open-source tools

As much as I love Glyphs, is it not against the idea of an open-source project to require proprietary software to edit the source directly?

Add design principles and design notes to readme

The primary reason Public Sans is interesting as a typeface and an experiment is its design principles. The principles should allow iteration and active development on the face while keeping a few important things constant. We should add these principles and design notes to the readme to give the project context.

Site links don’t display `:focus`

There is no visual indication of :focus for the links on https://public-sans.digital.gov. The default browser outline CSS style appears to be set to 0 globally.

From https://public-sans.digital.gov/specimens/css/public-sans.css:

See https://accessibility.digital.gov/front-end/keyboard-access/

Bug: leading issue

I've noticed that when changing part of the text in a block from regular to bold, the type shifts upwards by a few pixels...

Host on Google fonts?

Italics are still reminiscent of 18Franklin

Why did you chose proportional figures for this typeface?

Add Walser credit on specimen pages

Rebuild specimen site pages off of a template

Updating by hand is a waste of time.

Number Font issue in Notepad++

I am using default "Public Sans" font size 10 in Notepad++.

Specimen pages don't list the correct weight in the "body" comparison blocks

The "body" font comparison blocks on the specimen pages (eg. https://public-sans.digital.gov/specimens/public-sans-thin.html) don't list the correct weight for Public Sans (it always says "Public Sans Black" regardless of the weight), and doesn't list the comparable weight of the other fonts at all (I guess the latter is more of a feature request):

Create non-numbered versions for canonical replacement

Update example PNGs

All the example graphics should be updated with the newest information.

the OFL-1.1 license violates 17 USC § 105

17 USC § 105 says that any work of a US government employee is not subject to copyright. The OFL-1.1 license, by contrast, depends on the assertion of copyright for its effect. Therefore, there is no way for the work of US gov’t employees to be released under OFL-1.1. (I take no position on whether the terms of OFL-1.1 have been correctly applied here, though I’m skeptical.)

Numerals are not equally strong

1st of all: Nice font!
I found a few issues with the numerals, though:

To reproduce:

• Select 'Black 900' variant - this way, the issues stand out a bit more
• Squint at numerals (maybe increase distance to your screen, a bit)
  => Numeral '4' is clearly too strong
  => Numeral '0' might be a bit too strong
  => Tabular '1' is much stronger than '2' or '3'

There are other minor issues with the numerals, too, but they might be part of the design.
E.g. maybe check the joint thickness of numeral '2'

Conflation of kerning, tracking, spacing

This image https://github.com/uswds/public-sans#tighter-kerning-as-the-face-gets-heavier is described with “tighter kerning as the face gets heavier”.

When talking about type, it’s very common to hear spacing and kerning mixed up, but given the nature of this repository, I think it’s important to get things right:

• spacing: the general decision of space distribution built into a typeface. For example: “This 1970s design is very tightly spaced”
• kerning: an exception to the default spacing, wherever necessary – for instance in the combination A V. Example: “I hope you didn’t kern the tabular figures”
• tracking: changing the letterfit of a longer run of text. Example: “I usually track out small captions if there’s no dedicated caption font available”

This image https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uswds/public-sans/master/examples/public-sans-featured-images/public-v-lf-looser-tracking.png is captioned with “looser tracking”.

I propose changing the caption of the first image to “tighter spacing” …
I propose changing the caption of the 2nd image to “looser spacing” …

NB: tighter spacing as the face gets heavier is something completely normal in typeface design, so perhaps not worthy of additional emphasis.

File naming convention for Regular and Italic

The file naming of the regular weight is bit confusing to me. All font weight are named by their weight then, if italicized, with "italic" e.g. PublicSans-Black and PublicSans-BlackItalic.

However, the "regular" weight does not follow this convention, it has a PublicSans-Regular with a corresponding PublicSans-Italic. I would expect this to be: PublicSans-RegularItalic

remove gh-pages link

License does not follow best practices and usage intention

We want to Public Sans to be a good open-source project and follow SIL OFL guidance, requirements, and best practices.

• We've incorrectly removed the original copyright from Impallari Type's Libre Franklin. This was a mistake and the original copyright should be reinstated. See https://github.com/impallari/Libre-Franklin/blob/master/OFL.txt#L57-L58
• We improperly claim a reserved font name (RFN) because this would require anyone using the font who subsets or otherwise makes any modification whatsoever to rename it. We have no business interest in an RFN and we do not wish to make that re-use restriction on Public Sans — we should remove it from https://github.com/uswds/public-sans/blob/master/ofl.txt#L2
• We'll also need to look at the LICENSE.md in uswds to make sure it's in sync with the copyright information we have here. (https://github.com/uswds/uswds/blob/release-2.0/LICENSE.md)

cc @impallari @davelab6

Create tabular figures

Update URL

Can we change the URL from 18franklin.18f.gov to public-sans.digital.gov?

/cc @thisisdano @jeremyzilar

Any plan for serif ?

Any plan of making something like "public serif" in the future? 😉

The glyphs '7.tf' and 'l.ss01' aren't slanted in all Italics

Tabular '1' doesn't match with proportional '1' in all romans

Bad rendering of "a" in small sizes on Windows

Screenshot of the issue: https://i.imgur.com/nrNgvX4.png

Create italics

U+2044 (Fraction) and U+20A1 (colón) are defective in all Italics

Move specimen site to 18F pages

“Text or display” makes no sense

I think you mean for “print or display”.
Because displays still display text.

The dots on the i and j differ in size

The dots on the i and j differ significantly. This looks like a change introduced not present in Libre Franklin. The difference is most pronounced in weights ≤ 700.

Is this a conscious design choice or a design flaw?

The difference is rather jarring in words like hijacker.

Pubic Sans?!

Pubic Sans is somewhere between SF Pro Text and Roboto

Pretty sure that should read "Public Sans" ... !

Look into language support added in later versions of LF

Keep the repository strictly for source files

I would personally structure the repository to keep binary, exported font files, strictly separate from the source. If you update the release with each commit, you get a much cleaner workflow.
 I very rarely see it done the way I am suggesting though, so hopefully someone can educate me if I’m missing some essential information.

Change font name before any public release

United Sans, while lovely, already exists.
https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/7563/united-sans

Use a name free of any existing trademark.

Different glyph list between Romans & Italics

If you need, see the folder in Drive:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1fTeM4huxPa9qkzq5k4XZWBCU93qnSNY5

Add instructions for running the site

Since this is now a Jekyll site, it would be nice to be able to run the site, but we need instructions for how to set it up and run it.

Does this follow another repo's build process that we copy the documentation from? I'd expect to find this in either the README and/or CONTRIBUTING file.

Title points to federalist URL

Problem:
When I click the page title "United Sans", the URL changes from https://18franklin.18f.gov/ to https://federalist-proxy.app.cloud.gov/site/18f/18franklin/index.html

Demo page is not responsive.

Release version is outdated

I tried to start using Public Sans on my website but hit some rendering issues (mainly #24). I then tried the version that is within the git repository and that seemed to render correctly. The released version is from 6 Oct 2018 - is there any plans to release an updated version?

Thanks

Update italic with new metrics from the roman

There's been a bit of change to the roman that may not be expressed in the italic yet. Let's just sync them up so the family is consistent.

Add Cyrillic support

The Libre Franklin font from
https://github.com/alexeiva/Libre-Franklin
has Cyrillic support. It wouldn't be a bad idea to implement these on Public Sans font.

Property obsolete

Description

The element link below in the initial page is obsolete.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="specimens/css/public-sans.css" type="text/css" charset="utf-8" />

The problem is the charset="utf-8". For solve this problem, just remove the charset property.

A simple validation at w3.org can prove this: https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fpublic-sans.digital.gov%2F

alternate lowercase g

I would be very interested in seeing an option for a single-story or monocular g in this typeface. Overall I'm very pleased with this and I wish I could contribute directly, unfortunately I don't have access to Glyphs or a MacOS computer.

My feeling is that the binocular g currently included stands out quite a bit from the rest of the characters. It's very old-timey and busy compared with the rest of the typeface, I don't think it fits the modern look that's embodied by the rest of the glyphs.

I think it would be a better default, but barring that an option for a monocular g would make this font more stylistically consistent, especially in more modern designs.

Sync italics based on romans

This font's italics look different from romans.

Lining numerals (and tabular figures)!

lining numerals and tabular figures are useful for displaying data (number)-heavy content

the OFL-1.1. license violates the Establishment Clause

Amendment I of the Constitution of the United States prohibits US gov’t acts that “respect[] an establishment of religion”. OFL-1.1 is shorthand for the full name, which is “SIL Open Font License Version 1.1”. According to its website, SIL is a “faith-based” organization. Linguists Lise Dobrin & Jeff Good describe SIL more specifically as a “Christian missionary organization” whose main work is “Bible translation”. The US gov’t should not be using this license, as it creates an explicit entanglement / endorsement of a religious organization.

Slashed or dotted zero to differentiate from O

It'd be nice if the zero character could differ more from the O character:

Ideally the numeric zero would be slashed or dotted, so as to clearly differ from the letter O.
See e.g. https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode for an example.

Missing Hawaiian Character: ʻ

The font has support for most of the Hawaiian Diacritics (ĀāĪīŪūĒēŌō) but is missing the ʻokina.

Ā ā Ī ī Ū ū Ē ē Ō ō ʻ

"the ʻokina is encoded as U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA, which can be rendered in HTML by the entity ʻ (or in hexadecimal form ʻ)"

Should look similar to a left single quote but able to be told apart from the punctuation. Much like this example from Wikipedia.

There are currently less than 30 fonts that support all the Hawaiian Characters on Google fonts, This font being available would greatly help Government sites.

Add 18F glyph

Added at [[18F]] liga

Investigate new kerning pairs in later versions of LF